Ask Mario: a free monthly newsletter full food, restaurant & chef news etc - January 2006: Raclette

Raclette - The new fondue? by Clarissa Hyman Ask anyone to name the Swiss national dish and I bet you a gold cuckoo clock they say fondue. Yes, the original dunk ‘n dip that once graced a thousand wedding present lists with a kit that still clutters up the back of the kitchen cupboard alongside the chicken brick and yoghurt maker. Yet Raclette is to the Swiss as paella is to the Spanish or spaghetti to the Italians; not only is it one of the country’s most popular table cheeses, a close second in sales to Gruyère, but it also gives its name to the cooked dish that spells little alpine home to Swiss abroad. OK, melted cheese may sound like the slobby equivalent of Kathy Burke’s Waynetta in the pin-up parade of national dishes, but like all these things, it’s a question of what, where and with whom. Raclette derives from the French word meaning to scrape. That cheese melts over heat hardly seems an earth-shattering discovery akin to Einstein’s discovery of relativity, but someone had to find out just how good their cheese becomes when laid close to the fire. As the apocryphal story goes it was an unsung medieval Alpine herdsman or tree logger who first laid cheese over wood fire, probably in order to defrost a frozen lump fast, then decided it tasted pretty good scraped over his hot potatoes. A free adaptation of a story from ‘Valais Legends’ by Johannes Jegerlehner, however, takes credulity into the realms of whimsy. Melchior, so the story goes, was a herdsman in search of a lost calf who had to spend the night in a tumbledown hut reputed to be haunted. Starving he hunted round for some food and was delighted to come across a fine hunk of local Raclette. After getting a fire going, he started toasting his find when, all of a sudden, the little window flew open, revealing a horrifying pig’s head with bloodshot eyes which seemed to have its heart set on Melchior’s cheese. Though quaking in his shoes, he cracked the pig on the head with his cheese scraper and yelled: “Trotters off, fatso. Either come in or scram”. With an evil oink the pig leaped right into the hut, but the brave herdsman simply concentrated on scraping off mouth-watering layers of melted cheese. The monster then stuck his trotter in the fire and offered the herdsman a taste. Unlike his cheese, Melchior did not soften. “Stick to your grub and I’ll stick to mine”, he roared. Upon which, the enraged porker ranted and raved before disappearing up the chimney in a puff of smoke. In other words, never let a pesky, paranoid piggy stand between you and your cheese melt. ...Traditionally, Raclette is served with boiled potatoes (best in their skins), gherkins and silverskin onions... Essentially, little has changed since then. Melted Raclette is eaten whilst still warm and creamy, nutty and fluid, virtually straight from the heat source; let it stand round too much and it starts to become rubbery and grainy and taste rather like bubblegum. This need for immediacy of serving of eating makes cooking Raclette a very social, communal occasion, and has the virtue, unlike most barbecues, of being cooked in minutes. Traditionally, Raclette is served with boiled potatoes (best in their skins), gherkins and silverskin onions. Some people add wild garlic, dried Grisons beef or schinken ham or just grill slices over rosti or lightly steamed vegetables. It lends itself to flavourings such as nutmeg or paprika, and the cheese itself also comes in flavoured varieties such as garlic, green pepper or herbs. Melted cheese might sound, well, a little boring, but the extraordinary thing about Raclette is its addictive quality once you start eating it. Unlike, say, Welsh Rarebit, itís a cheese moment you are quite incapable of slowing up on until, totally cheesed out, the only solution is to go away and sleep then climb a few mountains to recover from the whole fabulous fromage experience. The best Raclette comes from artisan, small producers mostly in the Bernese Oberland and the Valais such as Herr Ammann in the Valais, who pursues a lifestyle that is vanishing along with its craft skills. Every summer, from June to September, he takes his herd of cows up to the summer pastures high in the Valais amidst towering Alpine crags looking down on the dramatically flat floor of the great valley and the small church where Rilke is buried. From the small summer chalet, where he also keeps 22 pigs, 6 rabbits, 3 cats and 2 dogs and 1 curious looking goat, his herd of 53 cows graze freely amongst the summer flowers and aromatic grasses, 130 varieties at the last count. As the summer progresses, he moves even higher up the mountain side to another chalet in pastures so high they would give most people a nose bleed, then returns to the lower chalet for the new flush of Autumn pasture. ...The best Raclette comes from artisan, small producers mostly in the Bernese Oberland and the Valais such as Herr Ammann in the Valais, who pursues a lifestyle that is vanishing along with its craft skills... Herr Amman’s day begins at 4.50am (not 4.45 or 5.00 - this is Switzerland where signs say it ís 499 metres to the next restaurant), when his Border Collies, canny and well-trained ‘cowdogs’, bring the cows in for the morning milking unaided, although his champion milkers, Rita and Dordogne need little guidance. Using wood he himself hewed from his own pine, beech and larch trees, he then opens a trapdoor in the floor to light a wood fire in an underground hearth that swings round to heat the milk in a large copper vat. During the summer, he makes Raclette every morning and evening, and one of his few concessions to modernity is that stirring is now solar-powered rather than done by hand. Once in their shallow moulds, the cheeses are immersed in a brine bath for 24 hours to ensure a good rind (regarded as the best bit when cooked), carefully dried on wooden boards, then moved to a small maturing room where they are daily washed and turned. They are ready to eat after about 8 weeks although specialist Raclette is sold up to 4-5 months. Raclette is most commonly encountered in half and quarter wheels, held in special Raclette ovens, often available to rent from the local cheese shop. In Switzerland and from specialist UK suppliers, you can also buy small domestic Raclette grills. But the best way to eat Raclette is to hold it over a wooden, outdoor fire and scrape off the soft, luscious layers as they start to ooze and gently bubble around the edges. The only drawback is that you need someone to hold the cheese with asbestos fingers, arms of forged steel, a steady hand with a Swiss Army knife and an inexhaustible supply of patience. Best of all, it should be high in a rippled green, Alpine meadow surrounded by orchids, where the warm and velvety air brushes your face like a lover's kiss. The mellow ringing of the cowbells becomes more insistent. Milking time. As you eat another slice of Raclette, the food chain draws a little closer.